Nothing More

Three came knocking, out of the snow.
I let them in; there was nowhere to go.

The first one set down a stone, and swore,
"What's real is what bruises — and nothing more."
The second paid out a thread and a chart:
"What's real is the road — I have walked it by heart."
The third one hummed, and wouldn't speak,
then, "Real is the kiss still warm on the cheek."

I asked them, which? They answered, all three.
(You can't slice the apple and keep the tree.)

So I poured them their tea, and I let it go steep,
and the steam wore a face I'd once known in my sleep.
A first white light. A dragon's slow eye.
And under the cloth, where the boot-tips lie —
six boots,
one shadow,
and nothing more.

Then a fiddle, from nowhere. Nobody chose.
But the feet found the step that nobody knows,
and the stone, and the thread, and the kiss on the air
went round one another like none of them cared
who was leading — as though a hand none could see
had wound all three into a single we.

I rose to light them each up to bed.
I wet my thumb. I counted heads.
I bent to the candles to blow them — three —
and couldn't.
There was one.
And it was burning me.